If that’s the case, count yourself among the more than 1 billion people who use Google’s products and services. At any given moment, over 2.4 million searches occur on Google, and Google crawls hundreds of billions of web pages to show searchers the best results.

With so many people searching for so many different things, it’s no wonder people like you are wondering how to learn SEO (search engine optimization) techniques you can use in your business or place of work. When SEO works as it should, it’s easier for your content to get discovered, increasing website traffic, leads, and sales.

To help you on your quest for the best SEO courses, we’ve rounded up 11 excellent options in the list below. With both paid and free options included in our list, anyone can find the resources they need to become an SEO professional.

Are SEO courses worth it?

If you’re looking for SEO courses, chances are you’re not seeking a university degree in SEO — which is a rarity in education anyway. The good news is that you can hone your SEO skills by taking marketing courses, reading blogs and watching videos, or even earning an SEO certification.

With an SEO course, you can learn everything from SEO basics like earning organic traffic to more advanced skills like using analytics and reporting to improve your results. If you handle digital marketing at your company or in your business, then SEO knowledge can prove to be invaluable.

However, anybody can claim to be an expert, create an SEO course, or offer a certification. So, it’s essential to do your research and ensure you’ll be getting your money’s worth and obtaining the most current information. Look closely at the coursework and any support services or coaching offered to make sure the material is comprehensive, up-to-date with modern SEO trends and practices, capable of teaching you the SEO skills you need, and highly regarded in the industry.

Remember, too, that there is no substitute for hands-on SEO experience. The sooner you can apply your knowledge in a real-world setting — or even test out your skills while you’re taking the course and ask questions along the way — the more prepared you will be to tackle any SEO challenge that comes your way.

Can you learn SEO in 3 months?

You might be surprised to learn that you can pick up SEO skills in a short period of time. Some of the best SEO courses are just a few hours long, while others might take weeks or months. If you want a comprehensive course that goes beyond basic SEO, expect to spend between one and three months on your SEO education.

The duration of time it takes to learn SEO also depends on factors like the amount of time you have to study, whether the course is self-paced or live online, and how quickly you can retain the information. Having access to coaching or an SEO community can also help you jumpstart your knowledge.

Aim to devote an hour or two per day to learning SEO — including not only any SEO courses you take but also additional learning opportunities such as podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs, and books. You’ll retain the information more readily if you make it part of your daily routine, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.

Best SEO courses to take in 2024

There are plenty of materials to access for SEO self-study, but the nice thing about taking an SEO course is that it will keep you accountable to milestones. With many of these courses, you’ll also benefit from asking questions, interacting with your peers, and kicking around SEO knowledge together. Plus, some of these courses are entirely free, and it doesn’t get much cheaper than that!

Here are our top picks for the best SEO courses:

1. Ahrefs' SEO training course (Free)
2. Practical Programmatic SEO (Paid)
3. Content-Led SEO (Free)
4. Blog Growth Engine (Paid)
5. HubSpot SEO Certification (Free)
6. Affiliate Lab (Paid)
7. Backlink SEO training (Paid)
8. LearningSEO.io (Free)
9. Gotch SEO Academy (Paid)
10. SEO Unlocked (Free + Paid)
11. Project 24 (Paid)

Okay, let's dive deeper into each course.

1. Ahrefs’ SEO training course (Free)

If you know nothing about SEO, Ahrefs’ SEO training course is a great way to launch your knowledge quest. The course is taught by Sam Oh, Vice President of Marketing at Ahrefs, a SaaS company that creates online SEO tools and free educational materials.

Keyword research, on-page SEO, and link building are some of the fundamental SEO strategies you’ll learn in this free, 14-lesson course, broken up into four modules that’ll take up just two hours of your time. There’s no registration required to get started, so you can simply set aside a couple of hours and finish the course in the time it would take you to finish the latest Netflix series you’ve been binging.

SEO beginners, small-business owners, and marketing team leaders will learn key tactics to start ranking higher and earn free, organic traffic. You’ll get a basic grasp of why SEO is important, how to optimize web pages for search engines, and how to implement link-building strategies to get traffic flowing to your site from external links.

With easy-to-follow tutorials and engaging videos, Ahrefs’ SEO course is a must for digital marketing professionals looking to jump into SEO training.

Ahrefs reviews

This feels like so genuinely caring and honest it's just mind-blowing. It is probably one of the best pieces of content I've ever saw on digital marketing." – Yevheniy Kushnirenko, YouTube

• G2: 4.6/5 rating (+487 reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (+525 reviews)

2. Practical Programmatic SEO (Paid)

If you’re looking to learn how to build programmatic SEO projects, Practical Programmatic SEO is a great way to get started, whether with code, no-code, or AI content. Priced at $197, the course is about 16 hours long and includes topics like “The Fundamentals of Programmatic SEO” and “Building an Affiliate Product Review Site.”

Bloggers, publishers, developers, and business owners can all find a home with this course, the brainchild of SEO expert Ian Nuttall, who has been building websites powered by programmatic SEO since 2015. More recently, Nuttall built a portfolio of sites that generated over 3 million page views per month and sold a site for half a million dollars in 2023.

The goal of programmatic SEO is to drive a ton of organic traffic, something that any SEO marketer aims to achieve with their digital marketing efforts — and this course delivers the goods to help make that goal a reality. Plus, the site has free resources, including a blog, to help you further your programmatic SEO knowledge and build both WordPress and Webflow websites.

Practical Programmatic reviews

I bought Practical Programmatic when it first came launched and devoured it within a couple of days. Now I have too many ideas for pSEO sites, and I am recognizing them out in the wild. What I loved about Ian's course as opposed to others was it was not only inspirational, but practical. This was the technical how-to that was missing from everything else out there. Content may be king, but now I know data is queen. – Catherine

3. Content-Led SEO (Free)

Backlinko is a popular digital marketing resource with over 5 million readers, and its founder, Brian Dean, wants to share his SEO knowledge with the masses with his course Content-Led SEO. You can enroll for free in Semrush Academy and complete the course in about seven hours.

The course starts with a basic understanding of the types of people who visit your site and the purpose of creating content for “Linkreators.” Don’t know what a Linkreator is? Don’t worry, because Brian explains who they are and how to create content for them to achieve SEO success.

As the course goes on, Brian delves into more complex topics like Share Triggers — elements that make your content highly shareable and linkable — along with creating go-to guidebooks, launching advanced content promotion strategies, and increasing dwell time.

With the wealth of knowledge that Brain shares in this content marketing course, you’ll walk away knowing strategies that the world’s best SEO experts employ. Ultimately, you’ll be better equipped to boost your rankings, drive traffic, and increase sales.

Semrush reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 rating (+1,700 reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 rating (+2,100 reviews)

4. Blog Growth Engine (Paid)

Curious how to build a $10K-a-month blogging business? Blog Growth Engine is the place to be. At $1,497, the course is a pricier option than some of the other SEO courses on our list but can help bloggers earn back their investment many times over.

Employing the strategies of the Blog Growth Engine, you can mimic the success of those who have gone before you. The course’s creator mentions having a $200K year in 2019, hiring freelancers to help scale content, quadrupling revenue in 2020, achieving a $1 million year in 2021, and ramping up to $1.4 million in 2022.

All that success is from a blogging business, and you can learn how to do it, too. By offering a blueprint for blogging success, Blog Growth Engine makes success achievable for anyone who follows the course step-by-step. And for anyone who wants to make their mark in the blogosphere, this site might help you get there.

Blog Growth Engine reviews

Within 4 months of launching my site, I was able to make $10,000. After 9 months, I quite my job and went all-in on my blogging business. *After having this success from BGE, Jessica is now our link building and consulting coach and has a salary from BGE. – Jessica La, byjessicala.com

5. HubSpot SEO Certification course (Free)

Among the SEO certifications available, the HubSpot SEO Certification course is one of the best free SEO courses available. The site starts with the fundamentals of website optimization, link building, keyword research, and other SEO topics.

At just over three and a half hours, the free course is ideal for time-crunched marketers, content creators, and anyone looking to uplevel their SEO skills. From evaluating and improving your website’s SEO and building backlinks to gleaning insights from keyword research and reporting tools, you’ll learn some of the most critical strategies for improving your search performance.

With the HubSpot SEO Certification, you get a healthy blend of SEO basics and more advanced strategies, including technical SEO, backlink strategies, and ways to optimize your website for rich results. And with HubSpot Academy offering a wealth of other resources, you’ll have endless opportunities to expand your knowledge.

6. Affiliate Lab (Paid)

Affiliate Lab proposes an ambitious goal for advanced SEO marketers looking to join the affiliate marketing game, providing a blueprint for ranking, monetizing, and flipping high-competition affiliate websites.

The course’s creator, Matt Diggity, unapologetically describes his journey from working 60-hour weeks in a cubicle as an electrical engineer to building ranking websites and making affiliate commissions. Whether out of necessity or desperation, Matt dove in head-first to learn how to make passive income.

Now he’s teaching others how to follow in his footsteps. Affiliate Lab demystifies SEO for affiliate marketers, teaching them everything there is to know about building an affiliate marketing machine.

With over 45 hours of training, six plug-and-play templates and tools, checklists, SOPs, and access to an exclusive Facebook group, this $997 course is a goldmine of SEO knowledge you can monetize.

7. Backlinko SEO Training (Paid)

The Backlinko SEO Training promises to teach you how to climb higher in Google search. Even those who feel like they’ve exhausted every SEO tactic known to humankind should be able to learn from this course — which, like the Content-Led SEO course, is taught by Backlinko founder Brian Dean.

Brian shares that when he first got started with SEO, he used traditional SEO tactics that were supposed to work, like optimizing title tags, using keywords on all his pages, and promoting the content on social media. However, Brian quickly learned that those strategies were not adequate.

Call it an “a-ha” moment. Brian realized that the secret to page-one rankings is not simply publishing great content but rather publishing certain types of content that get results — and promoting it strategically. To join the SEO That Works training and for pricing information, joining the waiting list.

8. LearningSEO.io (Free)

Head over to LearningSEO.io for a bevy of free tools and resources in one spot, curated from notable SEO players like Google, Moz, Semrush, and others. With all the noise in SEO education, this site cuts through the clutter to reveal the best SEO courses and much more.

Whether you’re brand-new to SEO or looking to expand your SEO education, you’re bound to find something useful in this comprehensive guide. The site covers fundamental concepts like keyword research, content optimization, SEO metrics, link building, and technical SEO.

You’ll also find more advanced topics on developing an SEO strategy, navigating search algorithm updates, and automating SEO tasks through machine learning. Make a copy of the free Google Sheet template, and you can store your own copies of the site’s SEO resources.

Beyond educational tools, LearningSEO.io aggregates expert tips, tools, checklists, and other resources from SEO experts. If there’s a course, blog post, guide, tool, or resource from the SEO community, it probably lives on LearningSEO.io.

9. Gotch SEO Academy (Paid)

Agents, consultants, and freelancers tasked with achieving top search rankings for clients can head over to Gotch SEO Academy, which offers a series of SEO systems in keyword research, SEO content, technical SEO, e-commerce SEO, and other specialties. The creator, Nathan Gotch, a top 1% SEO expert, has made millions selling SEO services to businesses — and with his program, you can join the ranks of SEO professionals.

Gotch SEO Academy is both a learning resource and a pathway to starting, systemizing, and scaling an SEO services business of your own. The SEO System, SEO Agency Accelerator, Weekly SEO Coaching, Private SEO Mastermind, and various certifications and online learning opportunities are just some of Gotch’s offerings.

Whether you want to start an SEO agency or hone your SEO skills, Gotch SEO Academy offers something for everyone. Apply to any of the programs to get started, book a discovery call, and view pricing.

10. SEO Unlocked by Neil Patel (Free + Paid options)

Created by digital marketing expert Neil Patel, SEO Unlocked is proof positive that you can drive traffic without spending a dime on advertising. Considering that Neil has 6 million visitors a month, with over 4 million coming from search engines, it’s worthwhile to check out what he has to offer.

In the seven-week course, you’ll learn SEO fundamentals like keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO, along with more advanced tactics like content marketing strategies and link building. You’ll also learn how to master Ubersuggest, Neil’s SEO tool, for ongoing SEO support and education.

SEO Unlocked aims to change the game for SEO players who want straightforward tips and tools to help boost organic rankings. After all, says Neil, if you’re not in the top three spots for keywords that matter to your brand, then customers aren’t going to find you — and SEO Unlocked can help change your results.

You can access SEO Unlocked for free, or upgrade to a paid Ubersuggest subscription starting at $29 monthly or $290 as a one-time payment for lifetime membership.

11. Project 24 (Paid)

Project 24 from Income School aims to help people with all levels of SEO expertise get more traffic, improve rankings, make more money, collaborate with like-minded SEOs, and grow their businesses. Inside Project 24, you’ll find a complete blogging system to help content creators find the right niche, topics, and execution system to gain organic traffic and monetize their blogs.

You’re not alone in your SEO journey when you join Project 24. Access live masterminds every week to get your questions answered and meet other members, and tune in to a members-only podcast that provides an inside look at the creators’ experiences and industry trends — before the content hits the public YouTube channel (and some of the content remains private).

With your membership ($449 the first year and $249 annually thereafter), you’ll have access to an active support community — something that’s often missing when you take a self-paced SEO course. Post questions, get answers, discover success stories, and find the encouragement you need to stick with building your website to a full-time income.

You, too, can be an SEO expert

If you’re seeking to master the art of SEO and elevate your digital presence, the online courses above are a no-brainer. These tactics actually work, proving these courses are effective tools for gaining in-depth knowledge and practical skills.

From beginner-friendly courses to advanced specialization programs, there’s something for every level of expertise. These courses not only cover the fundamental principles of SEO but also keep you updated with the latest industry trends and techniques and provide ongoing support.

Remember that SEO is always evolving, and continuous learning and hands-on practice are the key to staying ahead of the curve. So, whether you’re aiming to boost your website’s ranking, enhance your career prospects, or simply satisfy your curiosity for all things SEO, investing in one of these courses can be a game-changer.